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So, what's in store for 2018? During 2017, we embarked on a journey to explore how ORCID can optimally position its offering to empower researchers and advance the research ecosystem to drive better research outcomes. We engaged in a scenario planning process, imagining potential scenarios for the research environment in 2035, and identified four core strategies:

Position the researcher at the center of all that we do

Invest in developing a robust information infrastructure

Enable a wide range of verified iD-ID connections

Develop sustainability through strategic relationships

We have created a roadmap for the next three years centered on these core strategies. Each year focuses on a specific research sector. During 2018, our goal is to make ORCID record information richer and more secure using the funding community as our lens.

Researchers

We will be working to make it easier for researchers to connect information to enter data into their ORCID record, from using identifiers and APIs to resolve metadata to making it possible for researchers to proactively approve trusted parties from their ORCID account.

We will be collecting and sharing evidence demonstrating the impact of ORCID integrations on improving data quality and reducing researcher data entry burden. And, we will continue our leadership in researcher control and data privacy, making adjustments to our user interface and process documents to ensure we are ready for GDPR when it comes into force in May.

Infrastructure

In 2018, we are engaging with funders in a project called ORBIT (ORCID Reducing Burden and Improving Transparency). We got a bit of a head start in 2017 with a series of webinars, the launch of the ORBIT funders working group, and the publication of our new funder web pages in November. In 2018, we will be working with funding organizations to review their application and reporting information needs, and determining what information could be supplied through the use of identifiers and APIs. We will be piloting projects with funders to test the feasibility of using ORCID as a hub to enable information sharing – both pulling information from and putting funded award information into ORCID records.

Trusted Assertions

Since our launch, we have made substantial progress with ORCID adoption in the publishing community; well over 7,000 journals now use ORCID in the manuscript submission process, and more than 1,600 require iDs for authors. In 2017, our research institution initiatives made it possible to couple university identity management and ORCID sign on processes and we made it more straightforward for universities to add employment affiliation information to ORCID records. We’ve started work on updating our affiliations data model to accommodate service activities, professional awards, and memberships. This work will be released in the next iteration of our API in 2018.

Strategic Relationships

We are starting the year hosting our first ever consortium workshop, which will introduce our 20 (!) consortia to each other, celebrate best practices, and encourage the development of shared approaches to ORCID awareness and adoption. ORCID consortia are fundamental to our mission and reflect our core values of global engagement and collaborative decision-making. Consortia help build national and regional communities of practice that support open research infrastructure on a global scale. We have been working on clarifying roles and responsibilities and launched our new consortium web pages at the end of 2017. We will be publishing an updated consortium member agreement early in 2018.

Share your ideas and follow our progress

As in previous years, we maintain an open roadmap and current development board, so you can check what is on our plan and what we are currently working on. We will also be posting regular updates here on our blog.